"Well," said Kate indignantly, "as I am not going into his room--"
"I"m not so sure about that, if we can"t get a regular doctor. But he is very restless, and wanders all over the house like a timid and apologetic spaniel."
"Who?"
"Why "Ned." But I must go and look after the patient. I suppose they"ve got him safe in his bed again," and with a nod to her sister she tripped up-stairs.
Uncomfortable and embarra.s.sed, she knew not why, Kate sought her mother.
But that good lady was already in attendance on the patient, and Kate hurried past that baleful centre of attraction with a feeling of loneliness and strangeness she had never experienced before. Entering her own room she went to the window--that first and last refuge of the troubled mind--and gazed out. Turning her eyes in the direction of her morning"s walk, she started back with a sense of being dazzled. She rubbed first her eyes and then the rain-dimmed pane. It was no illusion!
The whole landscape, so familiar to her, was one vast field of dead, colorless white! Trees, rocks, even distance itself, had vanished in those few hours. An even shadowless, motionless white sea filled the horizon. On either side a vast wall of snow seemed to shut out the world like a shroud. Only the green plateau before her, with its sloping meadows and fringe of pines and cottonwood, lay alone like a summer island in this frozen sea.
A sudden desire to view this phenomenon more closely, and to learn for herself the limits of this new tethered life, completely possessed her, and, accustomed to act upon her independent impulses, she seized a hooded waterproof cloak, and slipped out of the house unperceived. The rain was falling steadily along the descending trail where she walked, but beyond, scarcely a mile across the chasm, the wintry distance began to confuse her brain with the inextricable swarming of snow. Hurrying down with feverish excitement, she at last came in sight of the arching granite portals of their domain. But her first glance through the gateway showed it closed as if with a white portcullis. Kate remembered that the trail began to ascend beyond the arch, and knew that what she saw was only the mountain side she had partly climbed this morning. But the snow had already crept down its flank, and the exit by trail was practically closed. Breathlessly making her way back to the highest part of the plateau--the cliff behind the house that here descended abruptly to the rain-dimmed valley--she gazed at the dizzy depths in vain for some undiscovered or forgotten trail along its face. But a single glance convinced her of its inaccessibility. The gateway was indeed their only outlet to the plain below. She looked back at the falling snow beyond until she fancied she could see in the crossing and recrossing lines the moving meshes of a fateful web woven around them by viewless but inexorable fingers.
Half frightened, she was turning away, when she perceived, a few paces distant, the figure of the stranger, "Ned," also apparently absorbed in the gloomy prospect. He was wrapped in the clinging folds of a black serape braided with silver; the broad flap of a slouch hat beaten back by the wind exposed the dark, glistening curls on his white forehead. He was certainly very handsome and picturesque, and that apparently without effort or consciousness. Neither was there anything in his costume or appearance inconsistent with his surroundings, or, even with what Kate could judge were his habits or position. Nevertheless, she instantly decided that he was TOO handsome and too picturesque, without suspecting that her ideas of the limits of masculine beauty were merely personal experience.
As he turned away from the cliff they were brought face to face. "It doesn"t look very encouraging over there," he said quietly, as if the inevitableness of the situation had relieved him of his previous shyness and effort; "it"s even worse than I expected. The snow must have begun there last night, and it looks as if it meant to stay." He stopped for a moment, and then, lifting his eyes to her, said:--
"I suppose you know what this means?"
"I don"t understand you."
"I thought not. Well! it means that you are absolutely cut off here from any communication or intercourse with any one outside of that canyon.
By this time the snow is five feet deep over the only trail by which one can pa.s.s in and out of that gateway. I am not alarming you, I hope, for there is no real physical danger; a place like this ought to be well garrisoned, and certainly is self-supporting so far as the mere necessities and even comforts are concerned. You have wood, water, cattle, and game at your command, but for two weeks at least you are completely isolated."
"For two weeks," said Kate, growing pale--"and my brother!"
"He knows all by this time, and is probably as a.s.sured as I am of the safety of his family."
"For two weeks," continued Kate; "impossible! You don"t know my brother!
He will find some way to get to us."
"I hope so," returned the stranger gravely, "for what is possible for him is possible for us."
"Then you are anxious to get away," Kate could not help saying.
"Very."
The reply was not discourteous in manner, but was so far from gallant that Kate felt a new and inconsistent resentment. Before she could say anything he added, "And I hope you will remember, whatever may happen, that I did my best to avoid staying here longer than was necessary to keep my friend from bleeding to death in the road."
"Certainly," said Kate; then added awkwardly, "I hope he"ll be better soon." She was silent, and then, quickening her pace, said hurriedly, "I must tell my sister this dreadful news."
"I think she is prepared for it. If there is anything I can do to help you I hope you will let me know. Perhaps I may be of some service. I shall begin by exploring the trails to-morrow, for the best service we can do you possibly is to take ourselves off; but I can carry a gun, and the woods are full of game driven down from the mountains. Let me show you something you may not have noticed." He stopped, and pointed to a small knoll of sheltered shrubbery and granite on the opposite mountain, which still remained black against the surrounding snow. It seemed to be thickly covered with moving objects. "They are wild animals driven out of the snow," said the stranger. "That larger one is a grizzly; there is a panther, wolves, wild cats, a fox, and some mountain goats."
"An ill-a.s.sorted party," said the young girl.
"Ill luck makes them companions. They are too frightened to hurt one another now."
"But they will eat each other later on," said Kate, stealing a glance at her companion.
He lifted his long lashes and met her eyes. "Not on a haven of refuge."
CHAPTER IV
Kate found her sister, as the stranger had intimated, fully prepared. A hasty inventory of provisions and means of subsistence showed that they had ample resources for a much longer isolation.
"They tell me it is by no means an uncommon case, Kate; somebody over at somebody"s place was snowed in for four weeks, and now it appears that even the Summit House is not always accessible. John ought to have known it when he bought the place; in fact, I was ashamed to admit that he did not. But that is like John to prefer his own theories to the experience of others. However, I don"t suppose we should even notice the privation except for the mails. It will be a lesson to John, though. As Mr. Lee says, he is on the outside, and can probably go wherever he likes from the Summit except to come here."
"Mr. Lee?" echoed Kate.
"Yes, the wounded one; and the other"s name is Falkner. I asked them in order that you might be properly introduced. There were very respectable Falkners in Charlestown, you remember; I thought you might warm to the name, and perhaps trace the connection, now that you are such good friends. It"s providential they are here, as we haven"t got a horse or a man in the place since Manuel disappeared, though Mr. Falkner says he can"t be far away, or they would have met him on the trail if he had gone towards the Summit."
"Did they say anything more of Manuel?"
"Nothing; though I am inclined to agree with you that he isn"t trustworthy. But that again is the result of John"s idea of employing native skill at the expense of retaining native habits."
The evening closed early, and with no diminution in the falling rain and rising wind. Falkner kept his word, and unostentatiously performed the out-door work in the barn and stables, a.s.sisted by the only Chinese servant remaining, and under the advice and supervision of Kate.
Although he seemed to understand horses, she was surprised to find that he betrayed a civic ignorance of the ordinary details of the farm and rustic household. It was quite impossible that she should retain her distrustful att.i.tude, or he his reserve in their enforced companionship.
They talked freely of subjects suggested by the situation, Falkner exhibiting a general knowledge and intuition of things without parade or dogmatism. Doubtful of all versatility as Kate was, she could not help admitting to herself that his truths were none the less true for their quant.i.ty or that he got at them without ostentatious processes. His talk certainly was more picturesque than her brother"s, and less subduing to her faculties. John had always crushed her.
When they returned to the house he did not linger in the parlor or sitting-room, but at once rejoined his friend. When dinner was ready in the dining-room, a little more deliberately arranged and ornamented than usual, the two women were somewhat surprised to receive an excuse from Falkner, begging them to allow him for the present to take his meals with the patient, and thus save the necessity of another attendant.
"It is all shyness, Kate," said Mrs. Hale, confidently, "and must not be permitted for a moment."
"I"m sure I should be quite willing to stay with the poor boy myself,"
said Mrs. Scott, simply, "and take Mr. Falkner"s place while he dines."
"You are too willing, mother," said Mrs. Hale, pertly, "and your "poor boy," as you call him, will never see thirty-five again."
"He will never see any other birthday!" retorted her mother, "unless you keep him more quiet. He only talks when you"re in the room."
"He wants some relief to his friend"s long face and moustachios that make him look prematurely in mourning," said Mrs. Hale, with a slight increase of animation. "I don"t propose to leave them too much together.
After dinner we"ll adjourn to their room and lighten it up a little.
You must come, Kate, to look at the patient, and counteract the baleful effects of my frivolity."
Mrs. Hale"s instincts were truer than her mother"s experience; not only that the wounded man"s eyes became brighter under the provocation of her presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick recovery. Encouraged by Falkner"s grave and practical a.s.sistance, which she could not ignore, Kate ventured to make an examination of Lee"s wound. Even to her unpractised eye it was less serious than at first appeared. The great loss of blood had been due to the laceration of certain small vessels below the knee, but neither artery nor bone was injured. A recurrence of the haemorrhage or fever was the only thing to be feared, and these could be averted by bandaging, repose, and simple nursing.
The unfailing good humor of the patient under this manipulation, the quaint originality of his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was, however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the hilarity produced by Lee"s affected terror of her surgical mania, and offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she had left in the wound with a view to further experiments.
"You ought to broaden your practice," he suggested. "A good deal might be made out of Ned and a piece of soap left carelessly on the first step of the staircase, while mountains of surgical opportunities lie in a humble orange peel judiciously exposed. Only I warn you that you wouldn"t find him as docile as I am. Decoyed into a snow-drift and frozen, you might get some valuable experiences in resuscitation by thawing him."
"I fancied you had done that already, Kate," whispered Mrs. Hale.
"Freezing is the new suggestion for painless surgery," said Lee, coming to Kate"s relief with ready tact, "only the knowledge should be more generally spread. There was a man up at Strawberry fell under a sledge-load of wood in the snow. Stunned by the shock, he was slowly freezing to death, when, with a tremendous effort, he succeeded in freeing himself all but his right leg, pinned down by a small log. His axe happened to have fallen within reach, and a few blows on the log freed him."
"And saved the poor fellow"s life," said Mrs. Scott, who was listening with sympathizing intensity.